Michael Flynn's Eifelheim is about aliens in Medieval Germany and really digs into the contemporary worldview, and it is awesome. Highly recommended. Don't be put off by the modern/American/physics bits, it's really mostly 14th century Germany.
My brain is blank - except that the Inkheart series is German (tanslated into English) and there are a bunch of German classics that might be fun. You'll need to keep the many meanings of 'fun' in your mind, though. Herman Hesse's Siddhartha is a possible travel novel or Gunter Grass' The Tin Drum. Lion Feuchtwangler expresses some really interesting thoghts in his non-fiction and so I keep meaning to read his fiction and never have, so I don't know whether to recommend him or not.
Okay, two totally non-time-period appropriate books, feel free to disregard, but: if you haven't read Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin (the inspiration for "I Am a Camera," and then Cabaret), I can imagine it would be fascinating to read while in the country. Also it's amazing.
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If it were me, though, I'd find a copy of Gluckl von Hameln's memoirs and read them. http://home.infionline.net/~ddisse/gluckel.html
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http://www.bibliotravel.com/locale.php?locale=153
The ones that hit me as Mer books were the Book Thief by Zuzac and Gudren's Tapestry by Schweighardt.
For Romania, I would look at The Shriek and the Rattle of Trains by Ambrose.
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If you want Romantic-era Germany, there's always The Sorrows of Young Werther, too.
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